This push-pull discussion is interesting to say the least. While I was at the gym last night I focused on a few of the techniques mentioned on these threads. I found most theories here to be...for the most part...true.

After my initial warm up I started the 'clean your shoe' stroke. While this helped to smooth my peddle stroke I found I was using my ankles a lot more which wore out my calf muscles like never before. While this excersize will take time to work on and improve, it helped to keep my cadence at an increased and steady pace (for a the short period).

The second item I worked on was the pull on the upstroke as mentioned by jyl in #35 . I noticed the more you focus on the upstroke, the less you concern yourself with the downstroke. This seems to give you a tremendous amount of added power, but like the 'clean your shoe' stroke, I found that I will burn out the muscles very quickly. I believe one would need to train this way (as in anything) to get really good at it.

I found if you focus on both these peddle styles, your overall stroke seems to improve in both smooth and power no matter how short lived they are. As I continue to experiment with these different stroke styles I also hope to improve my overall ride by incorporating all the things I learned this year. Since I am not a snow bunny, I will continue to wait until spring to find out. Who knows, maybe I will find I continue to resort back to my standard power down stroke.

Thanks for all the info,
John S